


coalescence

by taywen



Category: Scholomance - Naomi Novik
Genre: F/M, Gen, POV Orion, Post-A Deadly Education, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:55:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26854042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taywen/pseuds/taywen
Summary: “I know your name’s not up there with any of the alliances from New York enclave, but I figured they’d pester you into joining one of them sooner or later.”“No.”The force of Orion’s denial surprised both of them.After a pause, El said, “Your mother’s going to be named Domina of New York soon,” almost gently. Of course she couldn’t let him avoid the truth: she was the one who looked unflinchingly into the dark and dragged the secrets hidden there into the light.
Relationships: El Higgins/Orion Lake
Comments: 19
Kudos: 192





	coalescence

El was—weird, after induction. She was always weird, it was one of the things Orion liked best about her, but she was being weirder than usual. He’d managed to figure out (weeks late, of course) that she’d avoided him at first because she didn’t want the attention that his presence inevitably brought. That was fair. He didn’t much like the attention that he drew just by walking into an occupied room either.

But they’d been through a lot since then. Too many instances of mortal peril to count, for one thing, even if he overlooked the fact that simply attending the Scholomance was a frequently fatal experience. He’d saved a lot of people more than once, just in their class. Not that he was keeping count, or anything—he definitely wasn’t, though sometimes it felt like El strongly thought he should’ve been. But he’d saved El like thirteen times over the course of a year, twelve of those in the last three weeks, a really absurd record even for him. And she’d saved his life just the once, but it felt like more than that.

No one had ever saved _him_ before. The most anyone had done was his mom making sure he always had a supply of combat spells to learn when he was little, in case he was ever bored. She never let him bring them to the endless play dates she arranged with the other kids in the enclave though. Maybe that would’ve been helpful; maybe then they wouldn’t all rely on him to keep them safe.

He tried not to think about his mom while he was stuck in here; daydreaming about carefree days tucked behind the walls of New York enclave rather than trapped within the Scholomance didn’t serve anything. He didn’t even have it all that bad: mals never went for him, ever. They’d only attack him if he struck first, or if he was between them and the tasty magical kid that they really wanted.

And lately, thinking about home was painful in a new way, one he wasn’t ready to face yet. He could glance at it from the side, maybe skim his eyes over the surface, but he couldn’t force himself to take the plunge. Not yet. It was easier to focus on the mystery of El, even if she was a large part of why New York enclave wasn’t—

Anyway.

At first Orion thought El’s strange behaviour was from the whole not-dating thing? He was distracted by thoughts of their first kiss way more often than he should’ve been, especially considering El attacked him like a second later. It helped that she’d had a reason for it. But they’d resolved all that before induction, or so he’d thought. Unless she was just as distracted too? She wasn’t one to beat around the bush: if she had a problem with him, she’d never hesitated to tell him before.

It was just—strange. He was still mulling it over at breakfast a few weeks into the new school year. Possibly ( _probably_ , a voice that sounded suspiciously like El’s corrected; she did like to put him in his place) there was another reason for her to be distracted. Multiple reasons, really. The main one was graduation. It loomed heavily before the entire senior class, a massive thundercloud on the horizon. No, it was more like a category-five hurricane heading straight for them, and they couldn’t just close up the gates of the enclave to ride it out while the storm battered the rest of the city.

The clatter of someone sitting down across the table drew him from his thoughts.

“Morning, Orion,” said Aaron, the freshman from Manchester (the city itself, not the tarnished enclave) who’d brought El that interesting present from her mother.

“Morning.” The reply was automatic, drilled into Orion for as long as he could remember by his own mom. Was that it? El had been so happy to receive the bead and the thin, spelled roll of onion skin. Maybe she missed her mother. That didn’t seem to fit with her unstoppable pragmatism, though.

Pamyla and Liu’s twin cousins joined them a few minutes later, offering Orion similar greetings that he returned distractedly. Since induction, the four freshmen had been eating meals with El’s group of friends, as Orion privately considered them. It was better than “El’s alliance and a hanger-on or two”, depending if Chloe decided to sit with them that day or not.

Could El be distracted by the freshmen? The beginning of a new school year always _was_ pretty stressful. Almost every kid (barring the unlucky exceptions like Luisa) had a decent idea of what to expect from the Scholomance, but there were usually a handful who ignored common sense that Orion felt obligated to protect. He spent a few hours every night checking the corridors of the freshman res hall, at least for the first month or so, to shoo them back to their rooms or dissuade them from trying to share.

He still remembered what had happened the first night he’d spent in the school; not going out to help those two girls, whose names he didn’t even know, still left him guilty today.

“Hey, Orion?”

He lifted his head from the remains of his congealed porridge (the fresher porridge had been infested with scuttlers, his disposal of which had ruined the food) to look questioningly at Aadhya.

She grinned. “You’re good at taking care of mals, right?”

Orion looked at her blankly; beside him, El’s expression was totally flat when he glanced at her for help. Aadhya was still grinning in an unnerving way when he looked back over. “Yeah?”

“Of course you are. So have you ever kept one as a pet before? Maybe, like, a little one. As a secret.”

“No?” Orion dragged the single syllable out for longer than it needed, but he was seriously confused. The freshmen looked just as lost as he felt, though Liu was bent over her plate, curtain of hair hiding her face but her shoulders shaking ever so slightly. “I thought you meant ‘take care’ like getting rid of them.”

“Oh, my bad.” Aadhya folded her last piece of toast in half and took a huge bite. Even with her full cheeks, it kind of looked like she was smirking.

“Finish your breakfast, you overeager sheepdog,” El said abruptly. “It’s almost time for class.” Then she picked up her empty tray and went to bus it before Orion could shovel the rest of his cold porridge into his mouth and go with her. At least she waited for him to bus his own tray before leaving for class, though possibly that was because she was waiting for Aadhya and Liu. She and Liu started talking about a spell Liu was working on as they all headed for the nearest stairwell.

As soon as Liu and El walked into the language lab, Orion turned to Aadhya. “What was that all about?”

Aadhya just smirked again and clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it.”

Orion scowled, resisting the urge to rub his shoulder, but he still walked her down to the workshop even though it was out of his way. Aadhya and Liu were part of El’s alliance, which obviously meant they were important to her, and even if Orion privately thought the three of them could use an alchemy-track student (well, one particular alchemy student) to round out their group, he hadn’t said anything yet. There was still a whole year ahead, he’d prove himself to her and Aadhya and Liu, and then he’d join their alliance. Hopefully.

“Later,” Aadhya said, tossing a wave and an annoyingly knowing look over her shoulder when they reached the workshop.

So then Orion had to turn around and head back up; at least it was close enough to the start of the period that no one tried to corner him to make smalltalk and risk getting locked in the corridor for the trouble. When he got to the alchemy lab, Magnus and David had saved him a seat, and the rest of the decent workstations were all full. It would’ve been rude to ask someone else to move so he could sit in their spot instead, or take an empty station for himself when they’d saved one for him, even if he really didn’t want it and certainly hadn’t asked for it. Orion sat down between them, grudgingly.

Magnus started in on El almost immediately, complaining about something or other. He didn’t even listen in; it would make him too angry. Orion had never wanted to hurt another person before (he liked disposing of mals, which was obviously different) but it was like Magnus was determined to drive him to it. Even Todd Quayle, who’d probably graduated last year ( _thanks to Clarita, if at all_ , his inner El added helpfully) hadn’t inspired this kind of reaction.

Fed up, Orion turned pointedly to David and asked, “What’s your assignment?” without even waiting for Magnus to finish his latest rant.

“Uh, transmuting iron into silver.”

“I’ve done that one before.” In sophomore year. Orion didn’t know what David’s affinity was, but it probably didn’t complement alchemy all that well. “If you have any questions, I can help. But otherwise I need to finish my assignment, so please don’t distract me.”

David nodded quickly, wide-eyed. Magnus took the hint, and the rest of the period passed in a silence whose tension Orion ignored completely.

* * *

Orion stalked out of class as soon as it was over, heading directly for the language lab. He got there just as El and Liu were leaving. Liu smiled briefly at him when Orion waved, but El just looked blank. He’d take her annoyance over that; indifference was something he’d wanted from the rest of his peers for as long as he could remember, but from her, it only hurt.

Ingrained habit had him sitting beside Chloe when she beckoned him over to a carrel several rows in, though he gritted his teeth once he realized what he was doing and quickly bent over the exercises that appeared before him. Two French worksheets. He’d meant to take Spanish once he got better at French, but he’d never really found the time to apply himself between hunting down mals and dealing with the people that inevitably congratulated and thanked him and just wanted to be around him because he was so heroic. (The El in his head scoffed at that.)

“Orion,” Chloe said quietly, once class started, “are you and El—”

Orion lifted his head to glare at her. “Don’t start.”

Chloe leaned away, blinking at his sharp tone. “Uh, I was just wondering if something happened between you and El? You’ve both been acting kind of off around each other. And not in a good way.”

Orion took a slow breath and filled in the next answer on his worksheet. “No.”

“Okay.” Chloe went back to her Spanish essay.

“Sorry I snapped at you,” Orion said, when he couldn’t take the prodding of his conscience any more. “I’m just tired of you guys going on about El.”

Chloe bit her lip, not looking up. “That’s fair. I’m not trying to get you to ditch her though, you know.”

He did know. Chloe was the only one from New York enclave that could sit at their table for more than one meal and not get chased off by El’s pointed cold shoulder or her sharp words. Actually, El didn’t really give Chloe the cold shoulder, not like she had when Orion had first started hanging out with her.

“The others are.”

“Yeah.” Chloe whispered it out on a breath, almost a sigh. “They—yeah. I’m sorry for that.”

“Why. You’re not the one doing it.” Orion put his pen down and took another deep breath, trying to calm down. The person he was really mad at was Magnus, and it wasn’t fair to Chloe, no matter what she said, for him to take it out on her just because she would actually listen.

“Because they shouldn’t do it at all,” Chloe said, quiet but firm. Then she added, with the lightness that he was more used to, “By the way, if anyone asks what we’re talking about, I’ll say you were helping me with my essay.”

Orion blinked at her. He’d never really considered that her cheerfulness might be an act before. “Okay. But wouldn’t it make more sense for you to help me? You’re taking Spanish and French, and I’m still just doing French.”

Chloe flashed him a quick smile. “That’s true. So we’ll say I was helping you then. Anyway, whether you and El are dating is none of my business.” But she glanced sideways at him, looking for a reaction. Orion just looked back at her. She grinned again. “I had to try, Aadhya and I have a bet!”

“Sure.” But the mention of Aadhya helped, actually. It wasn’t like Chloe was just trying to pump him for gossip.

“Seriously though, Orion. Did El ask you to join her alliance? Are you worried about what it’ll look like if you accept? If it’s not you and El dating, that’s the only other thing I can think of.”

Orion was gaping, he was pretty sure. Not one hundred percent though, because his mind was racing over the idea of El asking him to be her ally. Of course El hadn’t asked him, even though basically every other alliance in the school _had_ already asked him to join them in one way or another. A lot of the loners had done the same; it always burned more turning them down than it did telling the enclave kids he was still deciding.

“Um, I don’t know what that look means.” Orion made an effort to close his mouth as Chloe went on, “But I bet the Magistra will have heard what you and El did at the end of last year, and it’s not like kids from the same enclave _have_ to form alliances.” It was just unacknowledged and long-held tradition. Like the enclaves allowing indie kids in to fill out the Scholomance’s classes and have more warm bodies to put between the mals and the kids from those same enclaves: just another thing that Orion had assumed was natural and unavoidable and hadn’t questioned or thought about, until El came along. “So don’t worry about what Magnus and the others will say. You and El are already a good team, it just makes sense.”

“El—didn’t ask me,” Orion managed.

Chloe’s eyebrows drew together. “Oh. Really—?” She shook her head once, fast. “Never mind, you obviously aren’t lying. Do you want her to?”

“ _Yes_.” Obviously. But now that he thought about it, it didn’t seem likely to happen. El had never really asked him for help, and there was a huge difference between _help_ and _forming a graduation alliance_.

Chloe made a thoughtful noise and turned back to her work again.

“Wait,” said Orion. “You don’t have an alliance yet either, do you?” He didn’t keep a close eye on them, but it was hard not to notice when another alliance had been added to one of the walls outside the bathrooms.

Chloe shook her head, not looking up. “It’s—honestly, it’s kind of stupid. Any of the spells I know, I bet El could learn if she doesn’t know them yet. She’s finished studying Spanish and French already.” Yeah, and a bunch of other languages too. El didn’t brag about it or anything, but just spending a couple of months with her was enough to know that she was miles ahead of a lot of the kids here. “But I still wish they would ask me.”

Orion nodded: that was perfectly understandable. He was still distracted by thoughts of El, which was the only reason he started to ask, “Do you—?” His teeth clicked together from how hard he bit down on the rest of that damning question.

“Careful, the best healer graduated, remember?” Despite the lightness of her words, Chloe was watching him carefully. “What were you going to ask?”

She’d said she wouldn’t tell people what they talked about, but if he asked her if she’d ever thought of what might happen if she left the enclave? That was more than him hanging out with a loner everyone avoided and maybe dating that loner; asking her to keep potential defection a secret would put her in an impossible position. He hadn’t even allowed himself to think it through, or entertain the thought for more than a second or two.

“Uh, never mind. I forgot what I was saying.”

Chloe smiled faintly, like she knew what he was thinking anyway, but she didn’t call him on it. Instead, she picked up her pen and kept writing. Orion didn’t interrupt her again, focusing on his own work. Or trying to, anyway. He filled out all the exercises, though he couldn’t say if any of the answers had actually been correct.

* * *

The rest of the day passed in a blur, his thoughts circling from New York enclave to El and back again, to infinity. He killed a flinger that tried to sneak up on a group of freshmen after lunch, and squashed a freakishly huge scuttler that had taken over one of the bathrooms in the sophomores’ res hall. The mals weren’t really notable, anyone could have dealt with them, but he could barely escape the admiration of various bystanders or would-be victims even so.

At supper, El mentioned that she would be studying in her carrel afterward; Orion said that he might join her, if he finished his latest alchemy project. It was already done; he could spend the study period holed up in his room or patrolling the halls if needed—but El just nodded, like that was fine, no subtle tightening of her mouth or eyes to go with it, so Orion figured it was okay.

He headed down to the seniors’ hall after supper. It was the same way as the alchemy lab, so Liu didn’t blink when he started walking down the stairs with her.

“Are you coming to the library later too?” he asked.

“Yes.” Liu adjusted the strap of her book bag, hitching it higher on one shoulder. “I have to feed my familiars first, and my cousins wanted help on a mathematics assignment, but I’ll come after.”

“Does your affinity extend to mals?” Orion asked, thinking of the tank of mice he’d glimpsed in her room on induction day. Jennifer had cried on and off for days when her parents told her she couldn’t bring her beloved cat to the Scholomance, and only stopped when Orion killed a gorger that had managed to sneak past the gates of the enclave and been attracted to her endless sobbing. Someone unattached to an enclave would only bring in a pet (or ten) if they had an affinity for it.

Liu’s eyes widened before she ducked her head, putting the curtain of her hair between them. Oops.

“Hybrids gone wrong, I mean. There were a lot of chayenas in the graduation hall. I think I got most of them, though.” They’d been the first mals to come at him, after all. “But there were other hybrids that I didn’t even recognize, they were seriously messed up.”

“I could only influence smaller animals when I came here,” Liu said, still fiddling with the bag’s strap. “I’m stronger now than I was then, but there are no other animals for me to practice on.”

They passed onto the sophomores’ landing and continued down. “You should make a list of what you saw, and if it comes up in Mal Studies, I can try to influence the simulacra,” she said a few turns later.

“I should’ve made a list earlier, so people know what to expect at graduation!” Orion shook his head, already going over what mals he’d seen down there.

That got Liu to lift her head and look at him disbelievingly. “It might only scare people,” she said finally. “There’s a difference between knowing the mals are there and having exact knowledge of what horrors await.”

“I guess.” Orion frowned. “Hopefully the artifice got most of them.”

“Do you think the mals will have destroyed the artifice again by the time we graduate?”

“I don’t know.” That artifice hadn’t worked in over a century: probably, the mals had forgotten what it was for. But the ones that survived the cleansing and graduation would figure out that the small group of magical humans working away in the far corner of the graduation hall had something to do with it. “Should we run another mission at the end of the year?”

“Orion!” Liu looked really alarmed; she’d never spoken to him so sharply. “Don’t say that so loudly.” She glanced around warily, though they were somewhere between the sophomore and junior levels and he couldn’t hear anyone nearby. Apparently satisfied that they were alone, she moved closer to him and continued even more quietly than before, “El told me that the replacements Wen and the others made had to be modified on the job. We don’t know what was different, so even though we still have the original blueprints there’s no guarantee any of the artificers in our year could improvise successfully again.”

“That’s true.” If only there was a way to communicate with people outside of the Scholomance. At least Wen could send blueprints for the modified replacements with the next class of freshmen.

“You should say as much to your friends,” Liu said intently.

Orion blinked at her. “You and El already know, and I bet El told Aadhya too.”

Liu stared back, her mouth half-open like she wanted to say something, then shook her head. “All right. I suppose El will have to mention it to Chloe.” That last part was so quiet that Orion probably wasn’t meant to hear it. Chloe had been hanging out with them a lot actually, so maybe she was one of El’s friends too. He’d spent so long thinking of himself as their protector that he couldn’t imagine any of the kids from New York enclave as his friends, but Chloe had given him a lot to think about today.

The rest of the way to the senior dorms passed in companionable silence, though Liu gave him another strange look when she noticed that he hadn’t gotten off at the lab’s floor. Oops. Orion shrugged it off and headed for his room, collecting the French grimoire the void had given him when he asked for a freezing spell last night.

He managed to wait all of five minutes before heading back up to the library. The walk down to his room had been leisurely, but the trip up went by quickly; he was walking fast enough that no one tried to stop him to chat, which was an added bonus.

The downside came when he realized that, aside from El, he was the first to arrive at her carrel, far too quickly to have been working on any kind of project in the lab. Of course, she looked up to check for mals as soon as he faltered, raised an eyebrow and said, “Finished your project already?”

“Yeah. Hi.” He forced himself to keep walking over despite the flush heating his cheeks.

“Hi,” El said drily, then turned back to her work, leaving Orion to unpack his grimoire and notebook in mortified peace.

He worked at the freezing spell for a solid five minutes before he found himself staring blankly at the page in front of him. Beside him, El’s pen scratched steadily against paper, with regular pauses for her to turn the page of her book, or check for mals. When Orion had first started studying with her, he’d thought she was checking for eavesdroppers. That was literally the only reason he could think of for her to look around so often.

Now he knew she was diligently checking for mals, and he’d seen a lot of the kids who weren’t attached to enclaves doing the same in similar situations. It made sense, but he’d just never thought about it before, and that was another reason on a long list of why he had serious doubts about returning to New York like four years in the Scholomance were nothing more than a blip on the radar.

And there he went again, thinking about home—about New York enclave—

“El, I want to join your alliance,” Orion blurted out.

El turned, slowly, to look at him. “You—what?”

“If you’ll have me,” he added quickly. “I know you probably already have a strategy.” He’d seen Aadhya with her sirenspider lute and heard her discussing the instrument with Liu and El often enough to know it was likely a focal point. And if they were relying on an instrument, it only made sense to use song-spells, which were more powerful generally in exchange for being more difficult to cast; Orion really didn’t have much of an aptitude for them. So how he’d fit in with the trio was—unclear. He still wasn’t really used to working with other people but he wanted to learn. With Aadhya and Liu and El and El and _El_.

She blinked at him. “I thought you’d be the last one out, dragging the—” _losers_ , the El in his head finished, even as the perfect, real El visibly switched to a more tactful, “—stragglers behind you.”

Orion looked away. “I know I can’t save all of us, and trying only makes it worse for everyone else, so—”

“Now you’re feeling guilty for _not_ actually planning the stupidest strategy in the Scholomance’s history?” she said, exasperated. But her mouth twitched up, like she was trying not to smile, when he risked a peek at her face. “I know your name’s not up there with any of the alliances from New York enclave, but I figured they’d pester you into joining one of them sooner or later.”

“ _No_.” The force of his denial surprised both of them.

After a pause, El said, “Your mother’s going to be named Domina of New York soon,” almost gently. Of course she couldn’t let him avoid the truth: she was the one who looked unflinchingly into the dark and dragged the secrets hidden there into the light.

Orion looked down at the grimoire. “Probably. She seemed optimistic in her last letter.” _By the time you’re home_ , was how she’d put it. Like she would become the leader of the strongest enclave in the world at last, the goal she’d been working toward for as long as he could remember, and to top it off her mal-slaying son would come home and make them even more powerful.

“I suppose a Domina’s son could defy tradition and ally exclusively with non-enclavers,” El said, closer to her usual levels of sarcastic. “No one in their right mind would try to stop you from going back to New York afterward.”

“I don’t know if I want to go back.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw El glance over her shoulder, looking up and down the aisle. This time, it probably was to check for eavesdroppers.

“That’s a life-changing decision, Orion.”

Using his actual name, she really was serious. Orion looked up, meeting her gaze as steadily as he could. “I know. And I—I haven’t made it yet. But allying with Magnus or the others isn’t going to make me want to go back any more than I do right now. I don’t think anything possibly could.”

El stared at him unblinkingly for several long moments, then nodded to herself, some tension that he hadn’t even noticed leaving her shoulders, like she’d come to some kind of decision herself. “I’ll need to discuss it with Liu and Aadhya.”

Orion nodded, his heart pounding as hard as it did after he’d faced down a particularly dangerous mal and come out triumphant. “Just—I mean, you don’t have to tell them I asked. Or—I don’t know.” If he asked any other alliance in the school, they’d take him on without a second thought but blind acceptance wasn’t what he wanted. Aadhya in particular didn’t put him on the same pedestal that every other student in the school did anymore, but he didn’t want to get a spot in their alliance just because he was the best mal-slayer in generations or whatever.

“You expect me to make them think this was _my_ idea?”

Heat flooded his cheeks. “You know what I mean!” Orion glared at her before he could stop himself. She was smiling again, of course; she really seemed to enjoy riling him up.

“Mind-reading isn’t my affinity, unfortunately.”

He knew she was just baiting him some more, but—“That’s not even an affinity! And even if it was, mind-reading probably needs malia to work, so you’d never use it.”

El’s expression was almost soft for a second; it passed too quickly. “We’ll have an answer for you by Monday.”

Orion kissed her; he couldn’t help himself. No one had ever done anything but immediately agree to any of his requests before, which was why he tried not to make any, and they’d certainly never _saved his life_ , or—or made him feel like this.

The kiss was so much nicer than the first time he’d tried it. For one thing, El put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him _back_ , and she didn’t knee him in the dick either—

Except she _did_ push him away far too soon. “Is this your attempt to convince me to say yes?”

Orion stiffened. “No—! Stop teasing me,” he muttered, sounding sulky even to his own ears, when El just grinned at him. He couldn’t maintain it, though; her lips were a little shiny even in the general gloom of the library, and it was really distracting. “You just—”

He didn’t really like talking about himself, possibly because no one ever seemed to listen when he did. Not that that was the point. What mattered was that even though he’d thought of several reasons he lo— _really liked_ El just a few seconds ago, he couldn’t put it into words now.

“No one’s ever told me no before,” he tried, then grimaced. “God, can I sound like any more of a creeper? I swear I didn’t mean it like that.”

El actually laughed, which was a relief. “I think I get the idea, but by all means, continue.”

“You saved my life,” Orion continued. “No one ever has before.”

El licked her lips, which didn’t help him focus at all. “You’re a reasonably competent battle mage. You don’t typically require saving.” Her gaze darted to the grimoire lying forgotten on the table in front of them. “And you’re learning a freezing spell. That’s one more vulnerability taken care of.”

“You’re the only person I’ve ever known who’s even considered that I might have—vulnerabilities.”

El’s breath caught and she leaned forward—“This is a bad idea,” she murmured, close enough that he could feel the puff of her breath against his cheek.

A shiver ran through him. “I’m sorry. I know we decided not now. We have more important—”

“No,” El said flatly. Her eyes were still focused on his mouth. “Snogging in the stacks is a bad idea. Most people don’t come this way, but—” She glanced back down the aisle, in the direction of the reading room. Was she imagining packing up their books and heading to one of their rooms to make out? Because now he was, only he was sure that anyone who saw them leaving the library would know why; his whole face was on fire.

“So I’ll cast a perimetre charm to warn us,” he blurted out. “Good for other students _and_ mals.” Orion barely waited for her short nod before doing just that, and then she was putting her hands on him again, one on his burning cheek and the other on his shoulder, pulling him back in.

* * *

The charm barely gave enough time to put a more respectable distance between them and fix mussed hair before Aadhya and Liu showed up together. Orion wasn’t sure how long they’d been kissing—five minutes? an hour?—but it wasn’t long enough. He stared blindly down at the freezing spell as Liu and Aadhya settled in on El’s other side.

“Hey Orion,” Liu said quietly.

Orion glanced up quickly. “Liu. Hey.” That was probably casual and normal, wasn’t it? He tried to focus on the grimoire, or at least to look like he was focused on it.

“Are you catching a cold or something?” Aadhya’s voice was loud in the relative quiet of the stacks. Or maybe it was Orion’s frazzled nerves playing tricks on him. “Your face is really red and you sound hoarse.”

“Aadhya,” Liu hissed, giving Orion a few precious seconds to try to come up with a believable excuse.

“What? That guy in the room next door to him—Trent? From Canada? He was looking pretty under the weather yesterday.” That made no sense. Trent had walked with Orion to breakfast and supper yesterday, and he’d looked normal. Kind of miserable, and pale from being stuck in the Scholomance away from the sun for over three years, but again: normal. And really unhelpful right now, Orion needed to think of something—

“ _Aadhya_! You’re terrible!” But Liu sounded like she was trying not to laugh.

“Whatever, you said Orion’s our friend now, so I’m definitely allowed! If anything, this is your fault, Liu.” He could practically hear the smirk in her voice. “Hello? Orion? You’re not going to keel over are you?”

“I’m fine,” Orion said blankly. Was that a lie? He couldn’t describe what he was feeling right now with a single word, but the good definitely outweighed the bad. The worst thing was worry that Aadhya and Liu wouldn’t want to ally with him. And even if they decided not to, they’d still be his friends. Aadhya had just said so.

Aadhya hummed. She didn’t sound particularly convinced, but she did turn her attentions elsewhere, which was a relief. “Was it a _secret mal_ , El?” Something thumped under the table. “Ow! Jeez.” She was scowling at El, who was glaring right back, when Orion risked looking up again.

“Hope that wasn’t the secret mal you’re always talking about,” he said as close to deadpan as he could.

Making the other three laugh was what he’d been going for, though he didn’t think it was all _that_ funny. Orion shook his head as his friends continued to snicker and applied himself to the grimoire again, smiling a little in spite of himself.


End file.
